No Roof, No Problem

After our adventures in Russia, it was time to start our journey in Finland. Originally our plan was to end our travels in St Petersburg but thanks to Sid’s suggestion, we altered our plan and included a trip to Finland as well, and it was a heck of a decision (because we had the best time). We used the Lux Express company and we could not have asked or any better. The seats were large and the leg-space was even better. There was a TV for us to watch shows, complimentary water as well as a coffee machine! (i had 3 cups of hot chocolate). The part of this travel that was tough was the immigration. We had an issue at both the Russian and Finnish border. Having these problems at 3/4am in the morning was not the best situation. Moreover, due to the time that we reached immigration, we had no chance of catching any sleep whatsoever. So by the time we reached Helsinki, we were all dead tired, not the situation you want to be in when we had no hostel to rest in and our bus to Rovaniemi was 17 hours away. So, we quickly found a left luggage area next to Kamppi, the bus terminal (thank god for left luggage services) and stored our bags. The next few hours were bit of a blur for me as the four of us found some sofas in the mall on top of Kamppi. I don’t recall falling asleep but by time i woke up, it had gone from 6am to 9am. Thankfully, my friends were alert and guarding our valuables. So after the short rest, we set off to explore some parts of Helsinki. We first visited the Market Square, which was sort of an area that had stalls selling souvenirs and food. There weren’t many open so quickly headed on to the fortress nearby. This was a large Finnish fortress that was accessible by a ferry. We spent a good two hours exploring the place and getting wrecked by the wind. This trip really taught me that i can handle the cold, just not the wind. The fortress was nothing special (in my opinion) but the view from certain parts was breathtaking. We could see the vasts ocean, both frozen parts and non frozen. Needless to say, this was a nice opportunity for us to take a lot of photos and we spent about 30 minutes doing so. By the time we were done, we quickly headed back as the wind had picked up and we were suffering (i sure as hell was). Back on Helsinki, we stumbled upon the best soup in Helsinki. It was similar to tom-yum and it had such fresh seafood. It was really expensive at 10 Euro per bowl. However, the meat was so fresh, the soup so tasty and meal so filling that it was worth it. We had nothing much left for the day as we  did not want to rush exploring Helsinki. Sooooo we pretty much rode the tram for about two hours, seeing the city from inside the tram. The rest did so while pretty much knocked out for the entirety of it and i relished the sleep. Before we knew it, it was evening and we had only a few more hours till our bus to Rovaniemi. These last few hours were tough as our energy levels were dropping ad there was nothing to do. Finally, the clock hit 23:59 and we were on the bus and headed for our 11 hour ride to Rovaniemi. This time we used the company Omnibus, which was not as comfortable but we were lucky the bus was relatively empty.